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android_core - Emulator registers topic but not sending events

asked 2016-01-06 19:32:06 -0500

piet.delaney@gmail.com gravatar image

updated 2016-01-06 20:52:03 -0500

I've got android_core and rosjava_core as projects under Android Studio. I'm currently running a Ginerbread (API:10) emulator and debugging it.

The android_tutorial_pubsub registers it's self as a topic publisher and I can see that the topic has been registered with roscore.

'rostopic list' sees the topic but doesn't see any events with 'rostopic echo /mychatter

'$ rostopic list
    /mychatter
     /rosout
    /rosout_agg 

$ rostopic echo /mychatter

wireshark show the http message being sent to register the /mychatter topic but nothing thereafter. Browser on emulator shows the web page fine on the rosecore host. The debugger shows the app is waiting to accept something.

My guess is that the 'rostopic echo /mychatter' should be connecting to the android_tutorial_pubsub app on the emulator.

Thought while debugging id see if anyone had any suggestions. I'll double check the wireshark trace and compare it to android_tutorial_pubsub running in the rosjava_core running locally on my workstation.

I thought I'd try to increase the logging level on the ROS Java Related Nodes:

 $ rosnode list
        /android_gingerbread/ros_text_view
        /rosjava_tutorial_pubsub/talker
        /rosout

So here I tried to list the loggers on the ROS Nodes. The ROS-JAVA related nodes seem to be Broken:

$ rosconsole list /rosout
        ros
        ros.roscpp
        ros.roscpp.roscpp_internal
        ros.roscpp.superdebug

$ rosconsole list /rosjava_tutorial_pubsub/talker
        rosconsole: error: node '/rosjava_tutorial_pubsub/talker' doesn't exist ...
        or doesn't support query: ...
        Service [/rosjava_tutorial_pubsub/talker/get_loggers] is not available.

$ rosconsole list  /android_gingerbread/ros_text_view
        rosconsole: error: node '/android_gingerbread/ros_text_view' doesn't exist or ...
        doesn't support query: ...
        Service    [/android_gingerbread/ros_text_view/get_loggers] is not available.

-pete

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Comments

Many issues like this with the Android emulator come down to incorrect networking configuration. Things to check: working DNS on both host and emulator (if you're using hostnames), correct setting of ROS_IP (if not using hostnames), firewall/NAT settings (prefer bridging), etc.

gvdhoorn gravatar image gvdhoorn  ( 2016-01-07 02:46:03 -0500 )edit

Can you update your question and include the values of ROS_MASTER_URI, ROS_HOSTNAME, ROS_IP and the network configuration of both your host PC and the emulated Android device?

gvdhoorn gravatar image gvdhoorn  ( 2016-01-07 02:47:24 -0500 )edit
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answered 2016-01-08 04:10:43 -0500

piet.delaney@gmail.com gravatar image

updated 2016-01-08 04:18:19 -0500

FIXED IT:*strong text*

I analysed the problem with WireShark this afternoon. The problem was that the Android Emulator (QEMU) has a built in firewall, thus using masquerading. The pubsub publisher sends the local ip address running on the emulated cell phone and the emulated firewall changes the address at host side, likely with a bridge. So the ROS Core running on a Ubuntu system was taking fine with HTTP thru the firewall but when I did a:

                                   'rostopic echo \mychatter'

it was trying to send a direct TCP/IP connection directly to the host address inside the emulator. So the SYN packets were just being lost.

I installed pubsub on an Nexus Tablet, not an emulation, and it worked fine. Seems worthy of a NOTE in the Android_Core Tutorial that *This demo doesn't work on a Emulated android device the currently described setup with Android Studio *. I mentioned it in my Question/Description that this was an Android Emulation. I don't know of anything I could have done on Android Studio to get around this. If there is it surely is worth mentioning in the Wiki pages in BOLD.

Anyone know if there is anything set up in ROS to avoid this problem in the Studio setup? Seems pretty silly for ROS to be limited to only machines behind the same firewall. Did I miss something in the tutorial? I was wondering if ROS_IP is provided with ROS_MASTER_URI for non Android Studion emulations to allow ROS to operate thru firewalls. I've picked up a few books on ROS and so far haven't read anyting about special proceedures to take for firewalls.

I just looked on the web and find this:

  http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/NetworkSetup

          What about firewalls?
                 If there is a firewall, or other obstruction, between a pair of machines 
                 that you want to use with ROS, you need to create a virtual network
                 to connect them. 

                 We recommend openvpn.

This seems like a rather awkward limitation. Like hooking up some language recognition software in a clowd like Amazon AWS to control robots runing ROS.

-piet

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Comments

NAT-traversal (or punching) is indeed not something that is dealt with by the middleware (natively), but is considered a system configuration issue. Hence the recommendation to solve this using non-ROS tools. There are more middlewares requiring extra configuration to work across NAT or through fws.

gvdhoorn gravatar image gvdhoorn  ( 2016-01-09 03:30:34 -0500 )edit

I also encountered this issue, and have been unable to resolve it. Yes - it works on a physical device, but is there any way to run the emulator headlessly for UI testing in the Android emulator with ROS on Docker? I would like to bypass or disable the QEMU firewall, but was unable to find any documentation about this.

breandan gravatar image breandan  ( 2019-03-19 22:36:29 -0500 )edit
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Asked: 2016-01-06 19:32:06 -0500

Seen: 385 times

Last updated: Jan 08 '16

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